Editions Shiflet

Monday, March 17, 2014

I've decided to close up shop here on Blogger and am moving to Tumblr in hopes of posting more frequency and expanding beyond just self-serving posting. If you are a member of that community, or just want to update your RSS feed, the new URL is http://editionsshiflet.tumblr.com.

To close the doors on this blog, I figured I'd gather all the audio works I've posted here into one nice concise post. Here they are:

Monday, February 24, 2014

Unfolding is a work that got out of control. My original intent was to assemble the collection of harmonic drones as a single track, but the more I listened, the more I felt the elements were conflicting with, rather than complimenting, each other. So I split them up into two sets, "unfolding" the monolithic track. I believe the sides of the tape work much better as individual tracks, but if you're so inclined you can certainly have a go at playing the digital files simultaneously.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

With the turning of the calendar, I'm hoping to get back to one of the original goals of the blog: posting more music.

To that end, here is one of my favorite sets of 2013, from the Fractal Mind Hut in Oakland. It was one of the few guitar-less performances from last year instead focusing on field recordings made around the Bay Area and in Yosemite National Park.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Inspired by flesh-eating horrors of the silver screen, it’s no surprise that this collaborative effort from Lawrence English and Liz Harris is so visually evocative itself. Outside of the opening noise burst – their aural take on the familiar ‘turning’ sequence in just about every zombie film I gather – it’s all somber drones and beautiful dread executed to perfection.

Ed Askew is a name I’ve recognized – pretty hard one to forget – but never taken the time to investigate. That changed when good friend and man of impeccable taste Jerry DeCicca told me he was producing his latest. My curiosity was finally piqued and was justly rewarded. The finest moments (the two songs in the video above are certainly among the best) are among the greatest in contemporary song craft, and even when the album gets a little too twee, it is never misses the mark by much.

A concept album about a celestial body that manages to completely avoid kosmiche cliché? Yes, please. The title is both remarkably accurate and a bit misleading in that regard. An array of pulses, thumps and skittish tones guide us through the early stages of the Life Cycle before it drones into maturity and eventually goes Giant. Synthetic and symphonic, this one is a dense undertaking.

The electronics on Kogetsudai are exceptionally crisp, spatial and minimal, a trio that I absolutely adore. Paired with Chauveau’s intense baritone vocals, they become absolutely otherworldly. This album certainly isn’t for everyone – and it’s not hard to imagine people outright hating it – but I cannot get enough of it. In fact, the only downside is its brevity. I want more.

I am perhaps a bit biased towards the overwhelming Overdue. This fall, I shared a handful of bills with Ms. Haley Fohr and heard a number of these songs performed in an utterly jaw-dropping fashion each night. That said, the record holds up on its own. One dark heavy-hitter after another, I would call the album an emotional rollercoaster, but that implies it goes up at some point. Emotional base-jumping seems more appropriate.

When I bought this album the proprietor of the shop confessed bewilderment upon its release. He was in attendance at the concert in question and was pretty surprised the exceptionally quiet set could be captured with any amount of fidelity. Indeed the stray cough and chair shuffling definitely make their obligatory appearances, but the overall quality of the recording is as astounding as the performance. Tilbury leads the way and Ambarchi’s restrained electronic accompaniments are absolutely stellar, constantly heightening.

When field recordings, electronics and orchestras come together in the right hands, magnificent things are bound to happen. And there aren’t many hands more capable than Block’s. Chaotic and serene elements jostle for dominance across the pair of side-long self-referential pieces, eventually striking a delicate balance in the waning moments. It’s a journey, this one, and a meditation, an electro-acoustic marvel.

My love of Sonic Youth is no secret. And as this is the best thing to come out of the SY camp in damn near a decade (I’m going with ‘since Rather Ripped’ here) it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that I am all about it. Drawing on the power of singularity, both the lyrics and guitar phrases entrench themselves, refraining until the point has long been made beyond clear. Individually monolithic, the tracks collectively reveal exceptional depth. The narrowing of scope benefits the album immensely.

As apt a title as Roly Porter’s, this album truly is a series of wires cracking. Cracking in the most glorious way, of course. Field recordings are processed and layered beyond recognition, distorting and ‘rusting’ (a term Mr. Haynes is fond of) along the way, before being reassembled into one of the finer noise documents in recent memory. Northern California is overflowing with talented sound artists, and Haynes has been behind the scenes (Helen Scarsdale Society, 23Five) more often more than not. Hopefully the Mego attention will pull him even further out of the shadows.

Probably the second most talked about album this year (behind Yeezus (in circles I pay attention to anyway)), and I don’t think I have much else to add to the discussion. I will just say that this was an early contender for album of the year, but it couldn’t hold up against strong competition. I hope their next album is even more shoegaze-y and even more people complain that it isn’t black metal.

I omitted Panzner’s Clearing, Polluted from my list last year due to our close personal and professional relationship, but have no such familiarity with Mr. Stuart, so fair game this time around. This album’s density and complexity are still unraveling. Its percussive and electronic elements are indecipherable from one another and as far as I can tell most attempts end up confusing one for the other. A challenging listen for sure, but and infinitely rewarding one.

I love that an album that is clearly such a giant step forward for Locrian has such an amazingly regressive title. They may not have gone into full on obliteration mode, but the band clearly whittled away previous excess and pulled its core to the forefront, coming across as a completely different, more honest, version of itself in the process. This sounds like the band Locrian was meant to be. And that band is awesome.

Album of the year by an enormous landslide. No offense to the other 12 albums listed here, or anything else that came out this year, but nothing came even remotely close to touching this. A single 38-minute piece that starts with the simplest of drones, swells slowly over the first 22 minutes and balloons into scathing overture before returning to its original form, You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me is an album of truly epic proportions. I can’t help but think of Charles Mingus when listening. J.R. Robinson: Metal Mingus.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

I'm back from a spectacular week on the road and there is some leftover merchandise post-tour. If you'd like copies of any of the following, they are all $8 ppd. in the US, $12 ppd. international. Audio samples below.